2012 Stories by William Michael Smith

FEATURED STORY

published Feb 28, 2012

Boondocks owner Shawn Bermudez was arrested and booked at the central jail Saturday night when Houston Police Department officers responded to another noise complaint at the popular Montrose nightspot...
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published Feb 22, 2012

Guy Clark, the quintessential Texas singer-songwriter, has just announced a one-off gig at Galveston's historic Old Quarter Acoustic Café for May 15.
According to club owner Wrecks Bell, he had bee...
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published Feb 09, 2012

Lonesome, Onry and Mean didn't get in much trouble in school. So his parents were a little disturbed to find the eighth grader in the principal's office on the afternoon of February 10, 1964. He and h...
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published Feb 09, 2012

I was living in Holland in 1977 when my younger brother, who had attended Wayland Baptist University on a track scholarship until booze and girls were discovered in his dorm room, came for a visit. Wh...
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published Feb 08, 2012

In our recent interview with Kinky Friedman, performing tonight at Dosey Doe in the Woodlands, we mulled over Jesse Dayton's on-going project of an album of Friedman's songs. Friedman was very enthusi...
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published February 9, 2012

published Feb 07, 2012

The one-liners come out of Kinky Friedman's mouth so fast you need a protective shield.
"The only thing Rick Perry managed to do with his Presidential campaign was to make George W. look like Thoma...
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published Feb 01, 2012

Jazz giant Miles Davis, along with immortal French chanteuse Edith Piaf, was honored last week with a commemorative stamp by the U.S. Postal Service. Davis's image is the well-known 1970 black-and-wh...
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published Jan 31, 2012

If you think we were flabbergasted by songwriter Bob Cheevers touting his election as 2011 Songwriter of the Year in the Texas Music Awards sponsored by mytexasmusic.com and "sanctioned" (a hedge word...
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published Jan 31, 2012

We all hate the trope "Houston, we have a problem," but we do have a problem in Houston with talkative, inattentive crowds at live shows. Scanning back over reviews from the past two years, at least...
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published Jan 27, 2012

Nutty Jerry's in Winnie has been doing a great job bringing in legacy acts like Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee Lewis, Guess Who, Mickey Gilley, Ronnie Dunn, and Blood, Sweat and Tears. But the club really got...
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published Jan 26, 2012

Lonesome, Onry and Mean was sad to learn via Chuck Prophet's Facebook page this morning that Reg Presley, lead singer of Sixties proto-punkers the Troggs, has been diagnosed with lung cancer.
The Tr...
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published Jan 25, 2012

UPDATE -- a note from the author: We spoke to Mr. Ames again this afternoon. He informed us that he thought the conversation would not be used in our article and that it was only for background inform...
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published Jan 24, 2012

We received the new Delicate Cutters 2011 album Some Creatures on the same day that we received the new Dead Fingers album from one of our favorite labels, Big Legal Mess, the offshoot successor to Fa...
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published January 26, 2012

published Jan 24, 2012

After several weeks of semi-classical, jazz, and folk music, Leon's Lounge takes a major swerve tonight with spiky haired Hans Frank. The front man of cow-thrash punkers Glambilly, Frank looks like he...
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FEATURED STORY

published Jan 20, 2012

Etta James, almost universally praised as one of the finest voices of our era, has passed away at 73. Ironically, Ms. James had been discovered and recorded by rhythm and blues pioneer Johnny Otis, wh...
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published Jan 20, 2012

Johnny Otis, one of the creators of rock and roll but primarily remembered as the godfather of rhythm and blues, has passed away at 90. Otis died at his home in the Los Angeles suburb of Altadena.
A ...
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published Jan 19, 2012

Part of a storied singer-songwriter scene, former Houstonians Gurf Morlix and Blaze Foley were living in Montrose during the Urban Cowboy craze but were not impressed. In fact, according to Morlix, th...
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